I spent hours in Barnes and Noble with my 2 sisters. Orland is a 2 hour flight from and 25 miles through varied Chicago suburbs. In order to celebrate a delayed 50th, I gave my sister the freedom to choose books she loved. I chose books that sat in BHM displays. She chose fiction. I chose non-fiction. She chose self-help. I chose Black women writers writing about themselves. My self-help looks different, but is the same. My youngest sister stood and watched. She's not a reader. She's waiting for this to be over.
Before I boarded the plane, I'd already revised sections of my story. I listened to the characters. I delved into their lives. I thought I was an assignment behind. It seems I was far more prepared for this week's class. My classmates didn't understand how I was painting the picture. They had to hear it.
And, then, my other professor lost a mentor. We've no class this week. Mourning take precedence. Another Young, Gifted, and Black Woman Writer has exhausted herself until transition. She wrote with people I've read or admired. She developed an MFA that redefined. In reading the interview between Valerie Boyd and Selaj Shah, I saw myself. I saw my manifested dreams and wishes comfortably chatting in a cadence they both understood. Who you read influences how you write.
Maya, Audre, Nztake, Nikki, Lorraine, James, Martin, Malcolm, Toni, Alice, Cornel, J. California, Langston, LeRoi. If I had to think about the literary lineage, Maya and Martin are more grandparents. I would be the love child of Cornel West and Audre Lorde who spent every holiday at Uncle Jimmy's house, Aunties Toni, Alice, and Nikki did my hair. They dressed me and let me be fly. Great Uncle Malcolm and Great Uncle LeRoi lived on the same block as Auntie Nztake. They popped up whenever. J. California was that cool cousin I hadn't seen since the last family reunion. Lorraine is my favorite big cousin. She lived how I wanted, smoking cigarettes over typewriters. We all understood our existence as political, radical, and a challenge. We provide varied safe spaces where Black is. It's excellence isn't limited to academic expressions. That only validates what we already know. God is all up through here. My pen is merely an extension.
But then, I get to play with Natasha and Kiesi, under the watchful eye of Jackie Shelton Greene. Dasan Ahanu is the brother I never knew I didn't have. Kelly Rae is the sister I adopted on site. Jilly, Erykah, and Laryn are my DJs. Ray Manley teaches me to battle while B-rock brings me back to Bmore. Hip Hop is the cultural evolution of spoken word. Bars show up in museums and on the lake. LB makes the words work until the bag overflows. Main showed me my dance is enough. We are more than curators. We are chosen family. These are play cousins, chosen kin.
My stories aren't luxuries. They manifest in Chicago cold. They fill pages of books I discover when I'm not bound by text. I pay in the freedom of twitter, following the gifts of Blackness that shine within a few characters. Revising is the work of the Gawds. Editing ain't nothing but Wisdom. To write is a privilege I cherish. It was illegal. I was illegal. And still I rise.
